Posts Tagged: life

The Years of Silence

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, writing + blogs.

It has been 5 years, 6 months, and 22 days since I was hit with a large shockwave that blew me off my daily blogging perch. I have struggled time and again during this past half a decade to resume a daily blogging practice to only have the silence over take my blog, my typing fingers, and more deeply my soul.

For many bloggers this past half a decade has been a time to leave their personal blogs for writing on their Twitter or Facebook or Medium or other social accounts. That has not been the case for me, as the silence has gone deeper: I quit Facebook in April 2012, I see no reason why I should write on Medium when I could write here, and my Tweeting has declined since 2011-2012 significantly.

No, the real problem that I have become silent. My whole world, internally and externally, has shrunk. And this is more than ok, it was necessary.

I have had one major cycle of quiet whole life silence in the past, where I withdrew into myself for a period of nearly four years. It was a time of reading, learning and conserving my energies before I jumped back out again.

I am not interested in discussing at length what happened in the past but finding a way forward from here. While I am not quite ready to be out and about yet, I am working steadily in the background; there are a number of background processes currently running of writing, thinking, and taking photos.

I am writing fiction stories to be published soon. And I am, also, thinking quite a bit on ideas and trends in technology and how people use it – whether I blog about it anytime soon remains to be seen. I continue to take and mostly post photos daily to Flickr and/or Instagram and/or here.

I don’t think the personal blog is dead. This one may be quiet and full of photos, but it is not dead and the background processes may very well come to the foreground soon.

Thank you, Sir.

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions.


Thur 12.05.13 – Thank you, Sir. Thank you for your patience, perseverance, hope, and the leading the push for honesty and forgiveness to crack open the very tough nut of apartheid.

Le Sigh… Blogging Slipped Away From Me, Again

Posted by & filed under writing + blogs.

The last two weeks have been very intense with the finishing up & delivery of a (mobile) web site, several sets of big family events (2 sets of birthdays), and then an old friend from college getting married.
I have lots of photos to post, I have a Nokia N9/N950 Tips & Tricks post for you all, as well as a few other posts on the back burner & on the to do list.

A Very Long Week

Posted by & filed under news + events.

Two Days before the end: Cousin Brian, his son Weson, and Grandma Grace
Hello lovely friends and readers,
Please forgive the lapse in posting on this blog, but there has been a big interruption that I eluded to last week in my CTIA posts. Last Tuesday, when I was at CTIA, I received a phone call from my Mom that my Grandma Grace had just been diagnosed with a terminal disease and was being put in hospice at her home. After many phone calls and talking to relatives, it was determined that I didn’t need to rush home from CTIA but that the situation was serious.
On Friday I went to visit my Grandma, who is 91, and she was somewhat awake and was surprised that so many folks were visiting her. This Monday, her health had declined and more of the family had gathered, at one point she woke up enough to greet her newest great-grandchild, Weston (as seen above), and then ask the rest of us, “Are we having a party?” “Yes, Grandma we are.”
A bit later she asked me privately, “Am I sick?” “Yes, Grandma, you are.” “Oh.”
Sick enough to die yesterday, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 1:45pm, as myself, my Aunt Dana, my sister Allison, and my cousin Traci stood at her bedside.
I have much to say, but right now I am too sad, too exhausted, and too worried to write it all out. I owe work to clients, proposals to future folk, blog posts & photos to you all, but right now is not the time. I wish I were the type who could separate personal from professional and plow forward, but I am not.
What I would like to say right now, tonight, is that my Grandma Grace was my best Grandma and I miss her terribly already.

Anxious? No.

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions.

This morning, my Mom, who had read last night’s blog post, asked if I was anxious.
I responded, “No, I was just reflecting on the last ten years and stating where I would like to go from here.”
This is a true statement. Right now in my personal life, I am happy and surprisingly content. In my professional life, my dance card is currently full, but I don’t want to get lulled in complacency.
Reflective, yes. Anxious, no.
The last two to three years brought a clarity to the fact that I work best in collaboration, my favorite projects of the last 5 years are the ones where I have worked in a team or closely with a creative client who wanted to collaborate. The last year worth of projects has made it even clearer that I do best when I am working with people in the same space and then am able to work on my tasks. I have honestly looked at my productivity patterns and see that they are not at their best when I am working at home all by myself with no client/collaborative contact for weeks at end.
I have several web designer friends who work best when left alone to themselves and they don’t want to work on team projects. I have one friend who after the initial client meeting will only deal with clients via email.
The Myers-Briggs personality assessment can say a lot about one’s working patterns and what environment they do their best work in. I will bet that my friends who do their best by themselves are Is for Introversion, in that they get their energy from being alone & work best when left alone. Reductive, I know, but I don’t want to dedicate paragraphs to parsing this out, when you can go read about it yourself.
I have taken the long form Myers-Briggs several times in the course of my life and I always test out as just a little to the Introversion side but very close to the Extroversion. This means that I get my energy from being by myself at least a few hours a day, but I am still social. I have noticed that I am happiest when I am able to touch base on what the plan is, break up into small groups or alone to get the task done, and then reconvene to assess and then iterate.
I wrote last night’s post on my ten years as a freelance web designer as a way to celebrate and reflect on what the last ten years of my professional life has been all the while being honest about the bad as well as the good. If that honesty was conveyed as anxiety, that was not my intention.
I think it is all to easy, particularly given that a web professional is always connected and by the nature of our professional community we are frequently on social networks, to paint one’s client situation as rosy and to only announce or put up in one’s portfolio the good projects, but it hard to talk about the doubts, the mild to major failures of projects or hopes, and otherwise be honest as it can be seen as unprofessional or it would look bad to do so.
I am interested in being honest. Honest that I don’t want to get caught in complacency of my life, but I want to examine where I have been and where I would like to go. And professionally, I would like to work at a company or firm where at least 50% of my time would be working with/for/around the mobile space.
Thus, not anxious, but examining and moving forward.

Stick a Fork in Me, I’m Done. Part II

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions.

Every year since March of 1998, with the exception of one (2002), I have gone to SXSW be it Music, Interactive, or both. Every year since 2001, with the exception of one (2006), I have gone to Punk Rock Bowling in Lost Wages.
This year I am taking off, not from SXSW as the rubric should suggest given it is 2010, but from Bowling. I just can’t do everything, and this week after months of working hard on a web app and a few other projects, I had to make the decision to trim something. Something that takes lots of social energy, creative energy, and some money. And that something was Bowling.
This year BYO Records and the Sterns are ramping up the event to include a Music Festival, I say – Bravo! I hope it goes well for the Barflies.net team, for BYO, and for all the lovely folks who will be bowling and merry making. I will not be joining the weekend long party.
By the graces of the Grace, in May, I will be in London or the like as it is time to make a transition.
Yes, I am officially job searching. If you have room on your team for a kick ass, intelligent, creative developer & mobile user experience professional, let me know. I am looking to join a great company, make a difference, and relocate.
Wish me well. And to all the Bowlers, have a grand good time!

Farewell to NaBloPoMo for Another Year, Unless you are Doing December…

Posted by & filed under art + photography, writing + blogs.

November has been both a good month and a bit of a struggle. The struggle has been family/holiday/death related, as blogged about here, and the Good has been friend/family/art/music/mobile/travel/wedding/baby related.
The three bits about November that were really delightful are as follows:
1) The weather *finally* took a turn for the better. Better in my book is colder. I am happiest when the days are 55-65 F (10-17C) and when the nights are 35-50 F (3-13C). For a lady who loves a good bout of chilly weather, I am not sure why I live in Southern California. The weather here in SoCal will be happy for me through December and then will unfortunately warm up in January. Gah.
I am still interested in working in London if anyone has an opening.
2) Milestones: Lauren and Dave’s wedding weekend in Seattle was lovely. I am very glad to see them married. It was also delightful to see Cindy & Matt that weekend as they were fresh of the married dept themselves. And even more delightful is that Seattle’s weather was in the 40s F all weekend!
3) November has been a very creative month for me, both in terms of professional web dev/coding bits and in my creative art life of mobile photography, writing, and drawing, as well as day dreaming.
It was also inspirational, funny, and heartening to read/watch my various friends and friends of friends daily blog posts or vlog posts for NaBloPoMo or the other variations on the daily creativity theme thereof.
So all of you who participated in NaBloPoMo or NaNoWriMo or NaVloPoMo officially or unofficially, Bravo! Good job and keep up the good creative work!